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Transgender student Nicole Maines, center, won $75,000 in a settlement of her discrimination lawsuit against her Maine school district, where she was forced to use a staff rather than a student bathroom, on June 12, 2013. Transgender rights advocates say bathrooms will be battlegrounds in the coming years in terms of trans rights.
Robert F. Bukaty / AP

Transgender student Nicole Maines, center, won $75,000 in a settlement of her discrimination lawsuit against her Maine school district, where she was forced to use a staff rather than a student bathroom, on June 12, 2013. Transgender rights advocates say bathrooms will be battlegrounds in the coming years in terms of trans rights.
Robert F. Bukaty / AP

Transgender rights advocates ‘going to battle over bathrooms’

Bills preventing trans people from using bathrooms matching gender identities are a threat, says a leading activist

Bathroom bully bills — legislation that bars transgender individuals from using restrooms that match their gender identities — will form the next front line in the push for equal rights, according to transgender advocates who are readying themselves for the fight ahead.

While spreading awareness about violence against trans people as well as ending employment and housing discrimination will remain critical issues, Keisling said she anticipates that going forward, the struggle over the bathroom laws will be central.

If any proposed bathroom bills do get signed into law, they are likely to face legal challenges. Gender identity and expression is included in Title IX of the 1972 Education Amendments Act, and the U.S. Justice Department filed a statement of interest in a case from Virginia, writing that it was in the public's interest to make sure that “all students, including transgender students, have the opportunity to learn in an environment free of sex discrimination.”

The only time Keisling, who is transgender, has ever been bothered about her own bathroom usage was when she was attending a dinner with a group of transgender lawyers at a restaurant in New York City.

As she prepared to enter the women’s bathroom, a waiter tried to stop her. “I know what you are,” Keisling recalled him saying to her.